


Stars Turning High

by Interrobam



Series: A Good New Beginning//A Far Off Destination (Noncanon Pronouns) [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: AU: Rung is not Whirl's therapist, AU: Whirl is not Jetstream, Accidental Flirting, Alien Culture, Autistic Rung, Banter, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, Command Hallucinations, Critical Social Skills Failure, Developing Relationship, Disabled Character, Falling In Love, First Dates, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Intrusive Thoughts, Kissing, Noncanon Pronouns, Other, Past Medical Abuse, Past Suicide Attempt, Physical Therapy, Rehabilitation, Suicidal Ideation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violent Thoughts, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>" “Oh!” Rung perked up noticeably, plating flaring. “Do you craft as well?”</p><p>“I..” Whirl used to. Whirl had. Whirl had crafted, once, before her hands became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. Before her spark became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. She hadn’t known her spark could still ache for that until Rung had begun describing it. But she couldn't just tell cir that. “I’ve… dabbled.” "</p><p> <br/>In which, on another possible Lost Light, Whirl and Rung accidentally become a couple.</p><p>(Canon Pronoun Version Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962 )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whirl has violent command hallucinations (similar to intrusive thoughts/impulses) in this fic, which are presented in second person as in “you should do this.” If commands are triggering for you please proceed with caution.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/10950332

When Whirl had come out of recharge at the start of the week, she had fully expected to be floating around around in the Allspark by now.

She had never been big on religion, but she had hoped that-- whatever the next plane of existence looked like-- she would be able to pick fights with Dai Atlas, or at least beat the scrap out of Killmaster a second time. But then tall purple and ghoulish had had to come in and ruin everything. And then the mecha hadn’t even _cared_ that she’d ruined everything, which was even _worse_ , and Whirl had had no choice but to defend her honor.

Waking up in the Lost Light’s Medbay was... _disappointing_. And, since Whirl was in the habit of uniformly consolidating all negative emotions into molten frothing rage, that disappointment found a throat and began to squeeze. She was hoping that the first neck she found would belong to her peeping tom, but the frame writhing in her grip was quite distinctly orange, not purple. Disappointing. [[kill them pop their helm off their spine twist them apart]] She eased up her grip, but didn’t drop the mecha completely. If she looked like she was intent on killing someone Ratchet might call for a security drone to take her down. Getting her helm shot off by a drone was a lousy offlining compared to the one she’d arranged for that morning, but at that moment she felt desperate enough to deem it an acceptable substitute.

Her suicide-by-drone backup plan was thwarted, however, when Ratchet started shouting something about her going back to jail. Whirl didn’t want to go back to jail. You couldn’t offline your way out of jail. She had _tried_ , back at Garrus-1. Some of her fellow prisoners had even been generous enough to help beat her halfway to oblivion. It hadn’t worked. Whirl wondered, bitterly, who a mecha had to kill to get their spark snuffed out in this joint. Apparently, not the one she was currently throttling. Whoever she was squeezing wasn’t even important enough to call a security drone in for. She let the mecha drop to the floor.

You try to do the universe a favor and it lands you on a junker full of D-listers.

Whirl found herself being just operational enough to haul herself out of the Medbay. That was good enough for her, which was good enough for Ratchet. Or at least, he didn’t try to stop her. Probably knew better than to waste his time. She dragged herself haphazardly down the hallways at an uneven pace, smearing fuel and paint against the walls. Her adrenaline was running out and her resolve had been severely dampened, but if she wandered far and wide enough she would inevitably meet someone who hated her enough to try to offline her. There were not many Cybertronians _left_ in the galaxy, and Whirl held the dubious honor of being almost equally loathed by her allies and enemies. If she wandered far enough, if the warnings stopped blocking her vision, if she knew the way to an airlock, if she, _if she_ -

She didn’t, and Ultra Fragnus found her. Which was _great_. Which she _loved_. Nothing better than meeting an old Wreckers pal who you’d last seen when she was called in to beat you out of a tantrum. A tantrum which she’d been throwing because Springer was too good for some awful half death, some protracted imprisonment, from rusting on a medical slab, because _Springer would have stopped Impactor_. Because no matter how many times she tried to explain, Roadbuster _wouldn’t understand_. 

Magnus didn’t want her on the crew. _Me and you both, buddy_ , she thought.

“Listen, Fragnus,” she snapped in the middle of the enforcer’s spiel about _proper channels_ and _security measures_ and _beep boop bleep_.

“That is not my designation,” she responded, predictably derailed by the blatant show of disrespect.

“ _Uncle_ Fragnus?”

“Whirl, state your intent.” Magnus was clearly not in the mood to play around.

“What I _want_ is to get off this _wreck_ ,” she stomped her pede on the floor for emphasis. “Drop me off back on Cybertron and I’ll be out of your field forever.”

“I’m afraid that is not possible,” Ultra Magnus exvented. Whirl could tell, even through the stern faceplate, how sincerely she wished it _was_ possible. “The engines have been damaged, and our location is currently unknown.”

“ _Unknown?_ Mags, tell me you’re shoving dross down my intake.”

“I am most certainly not.” 

Whirl let out an extended burst of static frustration, turned and slammed her helm against the wall hard enough to jostle her optic in its bell. “Great.”

“You have two choices, Whirl. Either I take you down to the brig and you stay there for the duration, or you agree to my terms and are granted _tentative_ parole.” Whirl slammed her helm again; this time her optic _cracked_.

“...What terms,” she eventually hissed, pained like a punctured actuator.

“You will promise to me that you will _not_ make trouble,” she began, in her customarily stern and booming _serious_ voice. Whirl muttered something about _trying_ , which seemed to satisfy her. “You will be placed with a member of the ethics committee to insure your behavior meets the standards of the Autobot code.” Whirl gurgled, hoping the noise would sufficiently convey the depths of her resigned disgust. It apparently did, because Magnus moved on. “Finally, you will be required to see an on-board counselor for weekly session.” Whirl turned her helm from where it had been resting against the wall, fixed Magnus with a wide, glowing glare.

“Can’t _wait_ ,” she sang. “I’ve been told my bad attitude comes from having a tiny port. I mean, anyone who’s _seen_ my port would know that was slag, but if you give me a _cute one_ I might let ‘em take a peek under my canopy.” 

Ultra Magnus did not rise to her bait, a sure sign that whatever was going on with the ship was, in fact, _severely_ taxing her.

“Someone will be assigned to you.” Her tone was cold. “Now, let us move on.”

Magnus took her to Rodimus, who made her do some song and dance about how sorry she was for the whole Cyclonus thing. Was she still not over that? It had happened _forever_ ago. Then Cyclonus promised to kill her, which was _so five hours ago_. In any case, the more Whirl thought about self-termination by provocation, the more it began to sour on her. Why end her life with yet _another_ mecha getting one up on her? That wasn’t very _Wrecker_ of her. Not that she was, technically, at all a Wrecker anymore.

Whirl made a note to talk Cyclonus out of it sometime. Or kill her. Whichever.

The rest of the cycle had lived up to the promise set by its first half, in that it was processor-numbingly boring interspersed with periods of almost enjoyable violence. Rodimus called a meeting to tell the general populace how utterly fragged they all were, and quite rudely failed to address her extremely valuable advice for upping the coolness of their collective mission. While high command yammered, the mech from the ethics board-- her assigned roommate, apparently-- introduced himself. Whirl resolved to take every opportunity to inconvenience him. As far as she could tell, that was still a permissible way of taking out her anger on innocent bystanders. Lock him out of the suite, pretend to mishear when he wanted something from her, spill some fuel on his stuff on ‘accident.’ Acceptable hazing. No real harm. No one would have to be stuffed into a regeneration chamber.

Whirl honestly hadn’t expected the sparkeater.

It was remarkable just to see with her own optic that Sparkeaters were, in fact, _a thing_. An _ugly_ thing, not that she was one to judge. She almost got to shoot it, which was not as fun as _actually_ shooting it, but a lot more fun than missing the fiasco entirely. Of course it was Trailbreaker who had to go and ruin the fun with his shiny bubble trick. Whirl had wanted to see what kind of explosion could take out half of a ship, but no one else seemed to share her scientific curiosity. She followed along with the chase for a while, but Rodimus kept shooting down her offers to shoot the sparkeater up. Some dross about safety and survival and xir _much better_ plan. 

She got tired of the whole thing pretty quickly once it became apparent that nothing was going to go _boom_ any time soon. At least she had tried to avenge her dear departed roommate of all of ten minutes. That had to be worth something, she thought as she wandered away from the engine room and back to her hab suite. 

Whirl’s suite no longer had a door. Or at least, not one that functioned. In her haste and during all the excitement, she had knocked a Whirl-sized hole in the steel. She didn’t like that very much, and stood in front of the entrance muttering oaths to Primus for a good long while. Without the door her suite was too _open_ , too empty and airy. _Bars_ would feel better. [[scrape your optic out of your helm]] In the end, she pried Animus’ berth from the floor and dragged it over to block up the hole. She savored the irritating skreel it made as she slid it across the floor. The prospect of bringing that level of discomfort to her neighbors at every start and end of the cycle cheered her spark considerably. 

She settled into a defragmentation cycle that her system alerts told her was long overdue.

When Whirl came back online-- for the second time finding herself in that Primus-fracked ship instead of the Allspark-- she met consciousness with a snort of static and an aching in her joints. She dozed stubbornly until she heard someone announcing that it was the first designated refueling period of the cycle. She rallied to rouse herself, though she’d rather have thrown herself in the Pit than join the rest of the crew around the major dispensers. Even if she had felt keen on socialising, she had the tendency to scrape-off every mecha she graced with her presence, intentionally or otherwise. She had a bad history and a worse reputation to live down, after all. And while a brawl might be fun, it wouldn’t be _good_. Magnus had been pretty clear about the fact that any future outbursts of violence would get her sent straight to the brig. And then, when they figured out where the frag they were, back to prison for the remainder of her functioning. Which was exactly what that whole ballet with the sweeps’ corpses was supposed to fix, but either Primus was without mercy or Unicron found her mess of an existence funny, because that hadn’t worked out in the _least_. 

Whirl decided not to dwell on her memories of the bunker, the smell of stale and fresh fuel and the cool dry air. Rodimus had given her a map of the ship when she was ‘welcomed aboard,’ and she brought it up, scanning for a fuel source that was somewhere small and isolated, unlikely to be a social hub. One of the recreation areas looked promising: a small datapad library, equipped with a dispenser and several seats, located by the munitions stores. She queued up directions to the room as she untangled her limbs and slumped gracelessly off of her slab. She stabbed impatiently at the door’s operation panel with a talon, her antennae twitching at the buzz of denial it issued, before remembering the makeshift replacement she had installed the previous cycle. Sliding the berth aside would be too much effort. She grabbed it by an edge and tugged it unceremoniously to the ground, where it made a sound loud enough that several mechen in the hall twitched. Funny. She initiated the directions and thought about oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl manages to lose a battle of wits against Rung, who doesn’t even realise said battle is happening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/10950440

When she arrived at the recreation room it was empty except for a table with three chairs, a cabinet full of datapads, an energon dispenser, and a small orange mecha engrossed in a tablet. The mecha was perched on a chair: hunched over slightly, one hand clenched in a fist in front of their mouth, one pede tapping, field held close to their frame. One mecha. That wasn’t so bad. They didn’t look much like a threat, which meant fighting them would be boring, which meant the idea hardly rated as a temptation. Good.

Whirl made her way over to the dispenser, input her credit code and collected the first of what would most likely be several cubes. Her systems were still nagging her periodically about the dwindling reserves in her tank-- she had burned up a lot of fuel beating down Cyclonus, and leaked even more out in the aftermath. She should have let Ratchet patch her up. Not that he would’ve. She held her cube delicately between the tips of her claws, made another cautious sweep of the room with her optic.

It was hard to tell if the other mecha had even noticed her come in. Their optics were hidden behind a pair of scopes. If they had noticed, the ‘bot-- Whirl narrowed her optic. _Was it a ‘bot_? She couldn’t make out an Autobrand on them, but they didn’t have a Decepticon badge either. _NAIL_? They looked small, high caste, eminently breakable. They were some sort of grounder, maybe a rover? Whatever they were, it wasn’t something that would be useful in a warzone. They hadn’t so much as glanced up when a hulking empuratee with a thorax full of guns and a field that radiated irritation came into the room. That sure sounded like a NAIL to her.

But they also looked familiar, in a ‘ _haven’t I beaten the scrap out of you somewhere_ ’ way. 

Of course, a _lot_ of mechen looked familiar to Whirl in that kind of way. Pretty much every Genericon looked like that to her. She tilted her helm, cycled her rotors. Oh well. She made her way over to the table, settling her frame into the chair opposite the reading mecha. She stretched her legs over the surface of the slab with a rev of her engines, being sure to scrape her pedes loudly against the steel and then rest them within fieldspace of the other mecha’s face. [[kick them]] When they didn’t react to her display she dipped her proboscis into the cube and intook a portion of fuel. _She knew this mecha_. Where would she know some NAIL from, anyway?

“Hey,” she nudged the mecha’s arm with her pede, winning a mildly perturbed glance in response. “Do I know you from somewhere?” The orange mecha’s expression turned to surprise, optic ridges arching, and they let out a burst of laughter.

“Is that a _joke_?” they asked in a tone that read to Whirl like offense. The rotary bristled, guns clicking to attention and antenna lowering. Yeah, very funny. Of course _their type_ wouldn’t associate with her.

“Forget I asked,” she growled, sweeping her legs off of the table and moving to rise from her chair. The other mecha made an unparseable expression and lifted their hands in supplication.

“Oh no, you’ve misunderstood. You tried to kill me yesterday.” Whirl paused. She didn’t remember that. Not that she doubted it. It sounded like her, to do something like that. It was more of a matter of _when_ and _where_ than _if_. “In the med bay, when you first woke up,” the mecha prompted. “You throttled me quite energetically.”

“Oh, yeah.” With that mystery solved, Whirl settled back into her seat and turned her attention back to her fuel. Once she’d drained the first cube, she returned to the dispenser and procured her second. It would be a lot easier if she could get multiple cubes at once, but that would require _holding_ multiple cubes at once. She might have tried for that, if she were alone, but she wasn’t about to risk dropping fuel all over the floor. Stuff like that attracted _pity_. Whirl didn’t like pity. She turned around and was a bit perturbed to find that the other mecha was staring at her. 

Her plating prickled. She flared it slightly and sauntered back to the table. The mecha had probably just realised who she was. Well, besides ‘the ‘bot who almost decapitated me.’ She thought, half in arrogance and half in practicality, that if this was anything but a colony mecha they _should_ recognise her. She’d been a Wrecker, hadn’t she? She had that scope for a face and those vicious claws, didn’t she? The orange mecha rested their chin in one of their hands and tilted their helm.

“My designation is Rung, of The Pious Pools, cie/cir/cern[1].” The glyph cie used for cern designation was old fashioned, rough and pronounced archaically. At least it matched cern pronouns: traditional, indistinct, _conventional_. “I should have introduced myself when you came in but,” cie made a curious gesture over cern helm, like the spinning of rotorblades. “I skipped over it. Sorry.” [[crack cern optics in]]

Whirl ignored cir. 

She concentrated instead on filtering her fuel: bare essentials with cloying additives. Medical-grade without the filtration. This was the kind of fuel to intake fast and be done with. Not that she had much of a palette to offend anymore. She stood, still pointedly ignoring the other mecha, and retrieved a third cube from the dispenser. She didn’t bother returning to her chair this time, downed her fuel quickly in front of the wall, staring at the machine’s numerical pad. As she retrieved her fourth cube-- still not nearly enough to quiet those obnoxious low-fuel alerts-- she stole a glance back to the table. The other mecha still hadn’t picked up cern datapad.

“ _What?_ ” If cie was angling for an apology, cie wasn’t getting one. What did cie expect, hovering over a damaged mecha that had just been denied a killing blow? _Not a bright move, specs_. What had cie wanted? Hadn’t Ratchet told cir she was better off scrapped? 

“May I ask your designation?” cie asked.

“Whirl. Polyhex. She,” the rotary replied, in a clipped tone and impersonal glyphs. Cie was probably about to report her for something. _Great_. Whirl hadn’t even noticed doing anything worthy of high command’s reprimand in the few minutes she’d been in the room. She’d tried half-sparkedly to kill cir, but that was ages ago. Speaking of which… “Would anyone miss this little twerp if I just shot cir out an airlock?”

Rung laughed. Whirl realised, belatedly, that she had asked that question aloud.

“No,” cie said, voice too light for the meaning of cern glyphs. “No, I can’t say they would.” Cie lifted cern helm from where it had been resting in cern hand, fixed cern gaze on the rotary. 

Whirl was used to being the mecha who cornered the market on creepy staring. Usually through her own intention: the single optic really messed with some mechen’s processors, especially if she could crank it bright enough. But what Whirl had learned theatrically Rung seemed to be accomplishing through purely natural talent. Cern face was blank and still and cern scopes shone bright and eerie.

“Whirl. She,” cie repeated, cern glyphs precise and laborious recreations of her own. “Whirl.” Cern optics went slightly dim, a clear indicator that cie was combing cern internal databanks for information. [[stop cir]]

“Listen, Eyebrows,” Whirl started, pointedly bypassing cern designation. No need to make cir think they were getting friendly. Rung’s optics flashed as cie was diverted from cern search. 

“Yes, Whirl?”

“You a NAIL?”

“No. I work- _worked_ , among the Autobot ranks.”

“Then why would you have to look me up?” she asked, voice low with implied threat. _Yeah, thats right, I may be glitched but I know_ exactly _what you were just doing_.

“I was checking to see if you were on the list of my possible clients. I haven’t got all of the data transferred into immediate retrieval yet.” Cie rolled cern shoulder slightly, made another strange motion with cern hand. “Unfortunately, there are only five [2] of us on board, and the war has left many in need of our services, so our pools of potential clientele are large.” 

_Great_ , Whirl thought, _I’m talking to a Psy-Ops here_. A fragging _helm-needler_. The last kind of mecha she wanted to be stuck with right now. _Alright, time to whip out the big guns_. 

Since Eyebrows apparently wasn’t intimidated by the _literal_ big guns, Whirl would have to go with one of her less favored methods for harassing her way into some peace and quiet. She swaggered away from the wall with a practiced air of confidence, settled back in her chair and put her fuel aside. _Some_ mechen might be so wrapped up in acting ‘non-judgemental’ that they’d pretend not to mind a short-circuited empuratee sharing a room with them, but _every_ mecha minded a short-circuited empuratee _hitting on them_. 

“Ooo,” she cooed, pitching her voice to emphasize the warbling warp of a vocaliser filtered through the unnatural anatomy of a mutilated helm. “I didn’t know Roddy hired _pleasure-mechen_ for this cruise.” She fixed her optic in her best leer, glancing pointedly at the other mecha’s dextrous looking fingers. “ _Please_ tell me you know how to work a flight stabilizer, because it's been _forever_ since I’ve had a nice pair of hands on them.” Rung stared at her, tilted cern helm, showed absolutely no appreciation for the grand show Whirl was currently putting on for cern benefit.

“Apologies,” cie said, “my phrasing was unclear. The class of mechen I was referring to was that of psychology specialists.” Cie smiled and gave a small shrug. “Actually, I’m unaware if there are interfacing specialists currently aboard. I could certainly inquire for you, if you would like. I’m not sure if they are classified as artisans or medics…” the mecha trailed off, seemed to be giving the matter serious attention. “In any case, you do not appear on my list.” 

Well, that had backfired. Okay, what about _oversensitive_ short-circuited empuratee?

“So, you think I’m glitched, do you?” she snapped, optic narrowing. Rung frowned, sympathetic but not cowed.

“I assure you, I only checked as a matter of protocol. It is necessary that I do not assume the circuit type of any of the mechen onboard, and that I-”

“Well, I _am_!” Whirl declared, struck by a sudden fear that that last line might have made the doctor cross ‘short-circuited’ off the list of Whirl’s most unappealing characteristics. “ _Very_ glitched. Short-circuited to the point where _Ultra Magnus herself_ says I gotta talk to someone about it or get thrown out the airlock!”

“I should _hope_ she would know better than to use such language,” Rung said, frown deepening. “Whirl, if you wish to report an abusive environment, I can–” Cie was finally sounding worried, but not _enough_ and not about the _right thing_.

“So, you know who the lucky mecha who _does_ get to deal with all this twisted circuitry is?” She blurted out before the smaller mechen could suggest something ludicrous like _filing a report_ just because she’d somehow managed to get every Cybertronian alive to prefer her dead.

“...I don’t know who your primary care provider will be at the moment, just that I’ve been ruled out, bu-”

“Ruled out?” Whirl curved her optic in what she hoped would read as derision and gestured at her helm with her talons. “You’re not good enough to handle _all this_?” 

Rung’s optics flickered again. “Medics have specialties,” cie explained. “Some of us are better suited to tackle certain subjects. There are some topics which I cannot objectively, professionally address due to my own psychological makeup.” Primus _. Okay antique, lets try this again_. Short-circuited empuratee hitting on you, this time _explicit and persistent_. 

“What I’m hearing,” she sneered, “is that you have a _raging_ empuratee fetish, and if they let me into your office you’d just frag the _scrap_ outta me.” 

Rung’s reaction was limited to a small downward twitch at the corner of cern mouth. “Personal relationships, as well as interfacing, between counselors and clients is deeply unethical and _inherently_ abusive. I should hope that any medic who would commit such a crime would not be permitted on board.” Primus now cie sounded _worried_ again. Worried _for_ her.

“So the fetish thing is still in play, then?” She was having trouble taking the high whistle of panic out of her voxcoder. Why wasn’t cie disgusted right now, why wasn’t cie _offended_? Why wasn’t cie _leaving_? “Sounds like you want to ‘face me so bad that you talked all of your buddies into taking on this _mess_ just so you could have me all to yourself?” Her laugh sounded strained, even to her own audials. “Good. I like a mecha who goes for what they want.”

“I actually find the fetishization of disabilities to be... distasteful.” How and _why_ was cie taking her _seriously_ right now? “Even if I had such a proclivity, it’s been a mere cycle since we took off. A cycle I primarily spent in mortal terror for my life. When would I have had time to request such an arrangement?” Was that a _joke_? Cie sounded _amused_. Okay, Whirl was going to have to be _way_ more straightforward.

“You know Doc, you haven’t said you _aren’t_ interested in swapping charge with me.”

“No, I haven’t,” Rung said, and cie was _definitely_ amused right there. “Is there a reason you think I _wouldn’t_ be?”

Whirl just _stared_ at cir.

The mecha’s bizarre reactions to her behavior already had her thrown for a loop, but **that** little comment _really_ sent her reeling. Why _wouldn’t_ cie want to swap charge with her? Like it wasn’t obvious? Like it didn’t make _sense_? She could get if the antique was too old fashioned, maybe even too naive, to get what she was implying. She could get if cie just expressed fear and disgust in weird ways. She could even wrap her helm, albeit with some difficulty, around the idea that cie was just entirely unphased by interfacing and violence. But _what in the Pit_ was- cie couldn’t be _serious_... Rung continued gazing in her general direction, something almost reminiscent of a smirk on cern lips.

[[call cern bluff]]

“Ooo, Doc,” she laughed, vocals high and reedy. “If you keep talking like that, I just might have to ask you _out_. How about we meet up back here next refueling time and talk. Just _you and me_.” _That_ got a reaction, but not the one she was expecting. Rung’s antennae perked up and cern optics flashed. Cern pseudo-smirk blossomed into a genuine smile and _frag that was actually really cute, oh **no**_.

“Oh!” cie exclaimed, emitting a small beep. For the first time since they’d started speaking, cie seemed at a loss for glyphs. Cie glanced down at cern hands, fiddling cern fingers. Primus... was cie _flattered_? Whirl knew the mecha couldn’t have been a big deal-- the fact that all Whirl got threatened with for almost offlining cir was _jail time_ showed that much was true-- but surely cie respected cernself enough that cie wouldn’t- “I- I’m not sure about a _date_ , but I would certainly enjoy talking again.”

Adaptus’ _cog_. Who let this mecha be a psych specialist when cie quite clearly had _clinically_ dismal self esteem? Whirl didn’t even know what to say. She just sat there. _Defeated_. After another moment of silent fidgeting, the mecha trilled surprise. Cie stood abruptly, smiling and bowing in apology.

“I have a meeting I must attend.” Ok, well, at least cie had the decency to bolt the second cie realised what cie had just agreed to. “But I look forward to seeing you again later in the cycle. Perhaps, if it goes well, we might call it date after all.” Whirl watched Rung subspace cern tablet and leave, optic wide in puzzled disbelief.

 _Unicron’s rusted connector_ , what had she gotten herself _into_?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Rung's pronouns, cie/cir/cern/cerns, are conjugated as follows: “CIE asked me to tell CIR where CERN stylus was as soon as I figured out which datapads were CERNS.” [ return to text ]  
> 
> 
> 2I made Rung one of a team of psychologists in this AU because, with all due respect to James Roberts, it’s patently ridiculous to have a single therapist for a ship of ~200 individuals. In this AU there are a total of five psychiatric professionals onboard. Whirl will be treated by one of them. Rung will be working with the rest of cern canon patients. [ return to text ]  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl finds out what she’s gotten herself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/11048090

Morbid curiosity was chief among the emotions that tugged Whirl back to the recreation station as the next refueling time approached. She had mulled it over, this strange mecha and cern stranger behavior, and she was fairly certain that this was a pity date. Another possibility was that the mech had been playing at a game of conjugal turbochicken and overshot badly. Pity seemed most likely, considering what she had seen of the helm doc’s disposition. Still, a pity date could turn into a pity frag, and Whirl hadn’t gotten to swap paint since the Wreckers. Even then a good frag had been few and far between; she hadn’t been lying about how long it had been since her stabilizers had gotten attention. 

There was always the chance that she’d show up and Rung would be nowhere to be found. Thinking about that made her spark twist with an uncomfortable pain that she liked to think herself _better_ than. If something as absurd and sensitive as _rejection_ could hurt Whirl, she’d have been reduced to a smoking crater-- hah, she _wished--_ the second she’d gotten thrown out of business and into the Dead End.

So she made her way back to the datapad library with affected boredom in her stance-- as if expecting nothing more out of her destination than a few cubes and some peace and quiet-- and called half-sparked insults after mechen she passed. [[make them kill you]] If she played her cards right she could get into a scuffle just decent enough to drive her to distraction without sending her straight to the brig. No one took her bait. Cowards. Perhaps that was for the best since, when she stuck her helm into the room, she found the orange mecha already there.

“Huh,” she said, because what in the Pit was she _supposed_ to say? [[say you’re going to rip cern spark out and feed it to cir]] Not that.

“Hello!” the mecha chirped, pointing to two cubes set carefully on in front of the chair Whirl had taken earlier that cycle. “I had extra rations,” cie explained, smile wide. It had been millions of years since someone had been so pleased to see Whirl. She’d liberated Decepticon POW camps full of mechen who’d seemed less than happy to see her. But this little mecha looked _thrilled_. She took the seat, clasping one of the cubes gently between the tips of her talons. It was of a higher grade that Whirl’s rations-- mecha must have sprung for a cushier fueling package-- glowing glittering magenta, like-

“Did you know that Sweeps have innermost energon?” Well, there that was. Good ol’ glitched out Whirlybird brain, always knew the worst things to say. At least this would be over quick.

“ _Do_ they?” It took Whirl a moment to realise Rung had _actually said that_ , in a tone that indicated curiosity rather than outrage or disgust.

“Yeah. Not a lot of it but-” Whirl gestured at her thorax. “Around the pseudospark.”

“I would never have guessed.” Rung was leaning forward, one of cern servos tapping on cern sparkplate, optics bright behind cern scopes. “I’ll admit to finding the Sweeps intriguing. The potential implications the method of their creation has for alternative construction methods and spark duplication. The retelling of their origin story in the context of constructivism is particularly fascinating.” Cie tilted cern helm and grinned. “I was at Kimia when they attacked, you know. I am fairly certain I saw _uninfected_ Sweeps eating mechen.” Cern voxcoder clicked abruptly and cie sat back in cern chair, glanced at cern lap. “I wanted to survive a bit more than I wanted to sate my scientific curiosity, so I never managed to get a good look at them.”

“If only someone had held one still long enough for you to give them the Ambus, eh?” Whirl joked. Rung’s helm immediately shot up, cern mouth thinning into an angry line. Scrap, she hadn’t even meant that as a barb.

“The Ambus Test is archaic drivel with repulsive geneses,” cie huffed, “It is founded on Shapeism and Typical-Circuit-Pattern Supremacy masquerading as seditious.”

Whirl stared at cir. “What.” 

Rung grimaced, averted cern optics and pulsed cern biolights in embarrassment. “Sorry. I become loquacious when emotionally aroused, particularly under duress.” 

Whirl’s optic did not waver. “What.”

“I use fancy words when I am upset,” Rung clarified. “I’m angry at Cybertronian society, not at you. I understand that the flaws of the Ambus Test are not common knowledge. Please do me the favor of disregarding my outburst.” After a pause cern antennae perked, cie turned cern gaze back to Whirl. “How did you know about the innermost energon?”

Wasn’t that the million shanix question. [[show cir yours]] Whirl shrugged her shoulders.

“You don’t need the gorey details, Doc.” Rung actually _laughed_ at that.

“Whirl, need I remind you that, like you and almost every other mecha on this ship, I survived four million years of war? If that fails to convince you, know that I _also_ endured both med school and the Functionist regime.” Cie raised an eyebrow, smirking, optics glittering with mischief. “Try me.”

“I kind of found some Sweeps corpses laying around,” Whirl answered, weakly. “I thought it might be, uh,” Whirl had never given much thought to phrasing things politely. Euphemisms were not in her repertoire. “I guess I wanted to ...investigate?”

“That’s interesting. You aren’t a medic- at least, not to my knowledge. If I may.... What makes you so interested in mechanology?”

“I…” She didn’t know. Well, she probably did, but thinking about it was like sticking her arm in a smelting pool. “I dunno. I like things that work together.” No no, that was too close. Rung was a helm doc, cie could figure her out. [[kill cir]] How had she rested her defenses that much. [[grab cir by the neck cut cern glossa out find an airlock _cie can’t know_ ]] _Shut up, shut **up**!_ “This isn’t a therapy session,” she growled, talons digging into the surface of the table. Rung started in surprise, but instead of wilting away cie made a soothing chirr, extended cern field so that it brushed Whirl’s with assurance and apology.

“I’m not trying to analyse you, Whirl. I prefer to be _paid_ for that.” Cie smiled gently, voice turning cautiously playful. “Unless you have a hundred-fifty shanix at your disposal, I just want to know more about you. I am under the impression that that is what happens on dates. Or am I terribly misinformed?” 

“Yeah, yeah, funny.” Whirl pried her talons carefully out of the surface of the table. Her glyphs came out flat and curt. “What makes _you_ so interested?” Rung ground cern voxcoder, sitting back in cern char and giving the question diligent thought before responding. 

“I am fascinated by mechanical systems,” cie said, finally, in a careful voice colored ever so slightly with awe. “When you think about it, we are all little more than a series of parts. Cogs, circuits, wires, actuators, tanks, fluid, fans, joints, struts, lines, and fuel. A brain module and a spark, so delicate and volatile and yet so... _enduring_. I appreciate how each component works in tandem with the others to sustain mechanical life. Our frames, every part of them, are at once so unique and so interconnected-” Rung’s hands were flitting through the air as cie spoke, cern grin wide. Whirl could feel cern field flaring and sparking and twisting with excitement even from across the table. “-kibble, plating, size, and alt all differ from one mecha to another, but inside we are so similar. Inside we are pulleys, gearteeth, magnets, and springs. As a race we can interchange T-cogs, chronometers, plating, and fluids so easily. Very few mechanical races, and almost no organic ones, have that type of consistency from one individual to another. Our frames can be combined and enhanced and broken down through remarkably standard procedure.” Cie interlaced cern fingers and smiled down at them. “They belong to us, yet we can also give them over to others. Every piece of our frames makes a being, every frame makes a race, every race makes up _life itself_. Small individual things, seemingly insignificant on their own, banded together to make a whole and significant collective. Infinitely complex and yet self-same at any scale. Chaos assembled into order. I feel… I think it’s beautiful.” Cie looked up, met Whirl’s optic with cern scopes and a field swirling with what Whirl thought might be giddy embarrassment. 

Oh frag, oh _frag_. Whirl couldn’t break cern gaze.

Whirl couldn’t tell cir how beautiful that sounded to her. Whirl couldn’t tell cir she felt the same way, had _always_ felt the same way. Whirl couldn’t tell cir about looking inside things and making sense of them, about her shop. Whirl couldn’t tell cir that for all her aching she’s never been able to find words for it, that it had always sounded so rough and silly when she tried. Whirl couldn’t tell cir that even though she had not caught the subtleties of most of those glyphs she _knew_ that was the closest someone has ever come to speaking directly to her spark. Whirl couldn’t cut herself open and show Rung where their organs meshed and matched and pumped and spun and _functioned_ identical. Whirl wasn’t even sure she could speak. She sent an unvoiced thanks to Primus when Rung only let the silence settle for a moment before continuing, voice gone a bit more hesitant but hands frantic with the same enthusiasm.

“I entered my chosen field, psychology, because the neurocircuitry system is among the most ill defined and misunderstood systems within the cybertronian frame. In my opinion, at least. Mechen often do not realise, but neurocircuits are remarkably durable, and so _resilient_. Perhaps the most resilient and most vital part of the frame, sparks aside.” Cie licked cern upper lip and bent cern gaze to the table. “Of course, I do not often get the chance to _physically_ investigate the Cybertronian frame, but my fascination has other manifests. I have a hobby of building model ships. I like putting the pieces together, making a smaller replica of something so vast. It’s silly, but assembling delicate things reminds me of the connection each small part of my reality has to the universe at large. It is comforting, in a way.”

Whirl was still staring at the place where Rung’s optics once were. “Ditto,” she croaked out, to her own surprise. It was somehow both a victory and a defeat at the same moment.

“Oh!” Rung perked up noticeably, plating flaring. “Do you craft?”

“I..” She _used_ to _._ She _had_. She had crafted, once, for the happiest few months of her wretched life. She had crafted, once, before everything had fallen to pieces and her hands became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. Before her spark became something that couldn’t touch something beautiful and delicate. _Primus_ , she hadn’t known she could even _want_ that anymore. She hadn’t known her spark could still _ache_ for it, had buried that need so deep she had thought it _dead_. [[tell cir to frag off]] “I’ve… dabbled,” she finished, impotent.

“In model building?” cie asked, too kind for Whirl to tolerate.

“So!” Whirl slammed her claws against the table, felt guilt and satisfaction battling for dominance in her processor when Rung nearly jumped out of cern chair. “You’re into brains and scrap?”

“I- Yes, I would say that is true.”

“Sweeps ain’t got no brain. Well, not the module proper.” It was a frantic feint at changing the topic, and to her surprise it _worked_ , Rung’s smile reappearing instantly.

“Is that _so_?” Cern voice was hushed with excitement. It was strange and oddly endearing to see such an unassuming mecha get riled up by such a morbid topic.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Just the stem.”

Rung practically _glowed_ to hear that news. As Whirl finished the two cubes provided to her, and acquired another couple from the dispenser, cie explained how the Sweeps fit into something cie called _The Collective Unconscious_. Whirl though that would be a pretty cool designation for a ship, or possibly a band, but apparently it was _actually_ some brain science theory of cern. Not wanting to look any denser than she already did, Whirl pretended to follow what the other mecha was saying perfectly, nodding and humming when it seemed like something particularly important was being said. 

Despite her excellent acting, Rung seemed to take notice of the sections wherein she became _completely_ lost, and would pause to define or simplify cern point. Whirl wanted to be insulted, but somehow couldn’t summon the bitterness. It was actually pretty interesting stuff, the idea that every Cybertronian had this spark-deep connection with each other. Not just the allspark, but something cultural and mechanological, sort of like the Insecticons’ hivemind business. A lot of it sounded a little too much like Drift’s weird hippy New Age Scrap for Whirl to get completely behind, but Rung didn’t get mad when she couldn’t stop herself from pointing out the parts that sounded like dross to her. If anything, cie got even _more_ excited when a chance came to debate finer points. It was… it was fragging _cute_ , to be honest. 

It certainly helped that Rung had a nice voice: warm and low and almost musical. Whirl wondered if cie had gotten augs for cern voxcoder. Being in the helm shrinking business couldn’t be easy if your voice was as grating as, well, _hers_ for example. Rung’s field began to open up as cie spoke, just as it had when cie was babbling about Cybertronian frames. Cern electromagnetic aura was remarkably lively, marked with flashes of interest and excitement. Listening to cir twitter on was almost intoxicatingly calming. Whirl felt actuators she hadn’t even realised had been tensed start to relax and soften as cie spoke.

“So,” Rung said at last, voice turning shy, flighty hands finally coming to rest in cern lap. “I believe I’ve done more than enough talking about myself. You mentioned you dabbled in-”

Whirl felt every one of those aforementioned actuators tense up again.

“Why’d you pick this room for refueling, anyway?” That was one nice thing about having no fragging filter on her voxcoder, she was never at a loss for random dross to shout. “You just like datapads?”

“It’s located nearby my office,” Rung said, seemingly unphased by the whiplash change of topic. “I like that it is somewhat… out of the way. Not many people come here, so it is rarely crowded. I don’t like crowds. Too many fields too close together, it becomes difficult for me to-” cie stopped speaking abruptly, clasped cern hands together and furrowed cern brow. “It feels good here. I like the hum of the engines. I expect to continue refueling here for the foreseeable future.”

“I just wanted to get away from everyone,” Whirl snorted, plating loosening slightly. At least this mecha was predictable enough to take _some_ of Whirl’s bait. Whirl had never met someone more easily distracted by small talk than insults, but she wasn’t going to ask for a gift drone’s maintenance history. 

“Perhaps we can stagger our schedules so that our visits don’t overlap?” Rung chirped, brows furrowing with concern. “Or, do you plan to look for another refueling station?” Cie was so courteous that Whirl almost _punched cir_.

“Too complicated. You’ll just have to learn to tolerate this face,” she sang, gesturing at her helm. Instead of laughing, Rung looked confused and distraught. Right, Whirl remembered, cie had a bad habit of taking self deprecation way too seriously. “Joking,” she clarified. “That’s a joke.”

“Oh!” Rung’s optical ridges shot straight up, cie opened cern intake and let out a _hopelessly_ fake laugh. “Complicated!” cie exclaimed in a strained tone that indicated cie was senselessly groping at what the joke was supposed to have been. 

For some reason quite beyond her, Whirl’s spark gave a very undignified flutter at this. Mechen rarely laughed at her jokes, none the less _pretended_ to laugh at her jokes. [[tell cir cie’s fragging adorable]] No. Well, maybe. Some other time.

Rung stopped laughing as abruptly as cie had started, reset cern voxcoder with a click. “The refueling period is almost over,” cie muttered to cirself as much as to Whirl, looking down at cern hands. “I have to admit I’ve very much enjoyed this… date. I have a free night five cycles from now.”

Whirl wasn’t sure if cie thought cie was being coy or obvious. Her own voxcoder felt suddenly stuck with grease, as heavy as her spark was light.

“...Five cycles from now, you say?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date 2: This Time It’s Personal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/11111033

They had their second date at Swerve’s, sipping fuel in a corner booth while the Lost Light hovered just within the orbit of Delphi. The bar had been open for perhaps two cycles: there was still dust on some of the tables, no set menu, and a stale smell in it’s atmosphere. Whirl had only heard of it because she’d passed some mechen complaining about the weak engex it served, and Rung hadn’t heard of it at all, but it was the closest thing to a social hub that she could find onboard. Rung had assured her that cie would be content with chatting around their regular dispenser. That's what they had been doing regularly since their first date: meeting in the recreation room and talking about rumors and politics and the business of the day. Sometimes Rung would read a passage out of the datapad cie was currently engaged with. And that sort of thing was relaxing and effortless and _nice_. Rung certainly seemed perfectly happy with that arrangement. But it was also strange, hidden away, certainly not what Whirl thought of as a ‘date.’ _Perhaps_ , she had thought, _cie didn’t want to let cirself be seen with her in_ public.

Whirl had shrugged and said she was feeling nostalgic for prewar times, back when you would take a mecha you fancied to a fuel house or a play or something.

If Rung thought it was strange that Whirl went straight for the only corner booth in the bar, the only table you could sit at with your back against the wall and get a good view of every exit, cie didn’t say anything. Which was good, because Whirl hadn’t figured out a good excuse for that habit yet. While they settled in and got their high grade-- well, after _Whirl_ got her high grade, Rung stuck strictly to the weak stuff-- they exchanged accounts of what had happened to them that cycle, their theories about the purpose behind the Delphi excursion. Rung offered very practical and well thought out explanations about staffing and resource allocation. Whirl’s posited that Pharma made up a fake plague just to get Ratchet’s attention and that the away party was going to walk in on the jet posing seductively on a pile of medical charts.

“Ooo Dr. Rachet, I didn’t hear you come in over the sound of _me saving more lives than you_ ,” Whirl trilled, the pitch of her voice heightened seductively. She whistled, kicking up her legs at strange angles and wiggling her stabilizers in a sloppy impression of a preening seeker.

Rung put a hand over cern mouth in an attempt to muffle a laugh of giddy amusement, then spent the next five minutes choking on a clot of midgrade that had strayed out of cern intake and into cern ventilation system. Whirl thought of offering cir a firm slap on the back [[jam a talon into cern neck]] but considering her claws and her strength and the fact that she had no idea how sensitive cern kibble was [[strip cern fans from the inside]] she reconsidered. Luckily for the both of them cie managed to pick the obstruction loose by jamming a few fingers into the back of cern intake, which Whirl heroically managed to only gape at a _little_ bit. When Rung had recovered, cie reset cern voxcoder and shrugged cern antenna in apology.

“Do you mind if, in the hopes of avoiding embarrassing myself further, I change the topic?” cie asked, once cern voice was back online. Whirl settled into a more relaxed position-- she hadn’t even noticed she’d been hunching over the table-- leaned back in her seat and shrugged.

“I-” Rung paused with a click, frowned, began again.” I was hoping you could tell me a little bit more about yourself?”

“That’d be a first.” Whirl mimicked a snort, a bad habit she’d picked up from Verity and never bothered to unlearn. “ _Normally_ mechen can’t wait for me to shut up about myself.”

“On our first date you seemed very intent on evading my questions.” Rung tilted cern helm, a movement Whirl was beginning to understand as a show of interest. “I assumed you were uncomfortable with scrutiny, but perhaps I was asking the wrong things?” [[gouge cern optics out cie was asking about the night they _killed_ you get cir before cie gets you]] Cie hadn’t meant to. [[hurry hurry kill cir cie knows cie _knows about you_ ]] _I’ll drink until you shut up I swear to Primus below._

“Okay, Eyebrows,” she said too loud, too fast, voice straining to rise above a clatter that probably wasn’t even there. “How about we make a deal? I’ll tell you some personal scrap... _if_ you answer a question first.” The glyphs left her frame before she even realised what she was saying. As per usual. She wasn’t expecting Rung’s field to suddenly snap tight to cern frame, for cir to sit abruptly upright. She’d just been trying to buy herself some time. _What did I say this time_?

“My accord is dependent on the specific nature of the query,” cie replied, enunciating carefully. Cern voice was _weird_.

“Why did you say yes?” she asked, viciously tamping down on a flare of embarrassment that attempted to rise to her field.

“...Say yes?”

“To me,” she clarified.

“...To you?”

“Yeah, uh,” she gestured at the bar, at her cockpit, at their fuel. “To the date. Date _s_.”

“Oh.” Rung’s face may have relaxed, the flicker of cern features was too minor to divine. In the very least Whirl could feel cern field expand slightly. “Because I wanted to.” Cie paused, perhaps thinking that qualified as a sufficient explanation, but two could play at the stare-at-a-mecha-until-they-talk game. ”It’s going to make me sound terribly _sad_.” Whirl’s gaze did not shift from cern mouth. Cie let out a small huff before continuing. “I was very flattered that you... noticed me.”

“ _Noticed_ you?”

“Noticed me. Talked to me. I tend to be... overlooked.”

“Oh, come off it.” Whirl scoffed, choosing to sidestep the fact that, on the occasion of their first meeting, she had been aiming less at flirtation and more at harassment. “You’re bright _orange,_ for Primus’ sake, and you’ve got those _ridiculous_ optical insignias, and that fragging _sparkport_.” Whirl underlined her point by jabbing a talon at the aforementioned window. Was that rude? That was definitely rude. Whatever. “Who _doesn’t_ notice you?” Rung laughed-- _Unicron sucking dross out of Primus’ exhaust Whirl was starting to **like** that laugh_\-- and shook cern helm.

“Whirl, you do realise we’ve already _met_ , don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m sayin’ if we _hadn’t_ met. I’d still notice you.”

“Not now. Before.”

“Before what?”

“I was one of the Psy-Ops specialists who did assessments for prospective Wreckers,” cie explained. [[tell cir cie’s lying]]

Whirl narrowed her optic, antenna flattening. “No you _weren’t_.”

“Well, I wasn’t _your_ interviewer,” cie hummed pensively. “I believe you became part of the team before assessments became standard. But we’ve seen each other close to a dozen times.”

“Dross.”

Rung exvented. Part of Whirl urged her to do something bizarre and unreasonable, like _apologise_. The rest of her would rather burn in the Smelting Pits than let someone get a lie past her.

“Do you have a copy of any Wrecker Recruitment Vids?” cie asked. The slope of cern eyebrows seemed more tired than angry, which was something at least.

Whirl synthesized another snort, but pulled up the folder anyway. “Yeah.”

“Clip 065-A74 at 1:26. I’m standing right next to you.”

…And so cie was. Sort of blurry and partially blocked by Roadbuster’s fist, but orange and blue and with the same silly eyebrows. Even though Whirl couldn’t remember seeing the little mecha to save her own rotors.

“Truth be told, I am not at all used to being pursued,” cie continued, in cern infinite mercy, saving Whirl the embarrassment of having to acknowledge her unwarranted defensiveness. “I have managed to acquire some friends, but very few datemates. I fear I’m _terribly_ out of practice. Not that I accepted out of desperation, mind! I just… do not expect mechen to be interested in me.” Cie paused, tapped out a frantic tattoo on the table with cern fingers. “Why did I say yes to you, to this date? I said yes because I find you attractive. I said yes because you are frank, and interesting, and very funny, and I wish to continue dating you.”

“Yeah?” Whirl really didn’t know what to say to that. “You’re pretty cute yourself, Doc.” Rung’s optics flashed bright and then dimmed, cern field shimmered with that tone which Whirl hadn’t been able to believe was flattery. This helm shrink couldn’t be any good for her.

“So,” cie said, leaning forward and tucking a fist beneath cern chin. “I was promised ‘personal scrap’?” Right, _that_.

“Well, I used to be a Wrecker,” she answered, glancing down to watch her claws flex open and closed. “You already know about that, though.”

“I knew you were a member of the team, yes. I cannot help but feel there is more to being a Wrecker than just a title, though.”

“You want to know what wreckin’ life is like?” Rung smiled, laughed, nodded. Alright, war stories. That, at least, was something Whirl could do. Whirl puffed up her plating and flexed her stabilizers. “I got _just_ the tale of gore and glory for ya. Something Fisitron would eat their right servo to hear!”

Rung was a good listener. Of course, it wascern _job_ to be a good listener, but it wasn’t like cie was getting paid for this, so Whirl still chalked it up as a victory. Cie nodded silently, optics bright and focused, at first, but as Whirl continued to regale cir cie occasionally interjected to ask questions, or prompt her for more details.

It was easy to talk to Rung. Surprisingly easy, confusingly easy, would’ve even qualified as _suspiciously_ easy had Whirl not known cern profession. Cie had an air of quiet stillness-- even in motion, even when talking-- like nothing Whirl could name. Cie seemed to absorb and process her chatter effortlessly, rarely intruding and never interrupting. Whirl could almost see how she’d missed cir. And then cie smiled at something Whirl had said-- and it was just so unpracticed and genuine and gleeful-- and she couldn’t imagine not noticing cir.

Somewhere along the line Whirl found herself wandering away from the brash violence of her typical bar stories and into a more personal side of her time under Springer. She sidestepped the Impactor-Era scrap, and though Rung surely knew about him, maybe even about Pova, cie made no motion to ask about it. Still, as the night went on cie managed to pry a handful of personal details out of Whirl: her fuel preferences, her thoughts on the quest she’d gotten roped into, her favorite vids both Cybertronian and alien in origin. Whirl might have gotten mad about that, denounced cern tricky helm doctor ways, but cie was so open and easy about inquiring that she barely minded. She hardly noticed the time passing, the bar clearing out, until Rung pointed out that they’d really need to begin defragmentation protocols soon if they wanted to be up and about a full capacity the next cycle.

Cern attempt to pay the tab was thwarted by Whirl’s foresight-- she’d already arranged for all the fuel to be charged to her account-- and before cie could protest Whirl was already offering to walk cir back to cern suite. Rung accepted graciously. They spent the walk across the ship in silence, and Whirl was surprised to find herself enjoying that as well. It was nice, to be alone and quiet with someone like Rung. It was nice to feel a field against hers that was not soured with fear or disgust or hostility. She hadn’t thought about that before. It had been so long that she had forgotten how it once was-- to be with another mech without the weight of revulsion, without the toll of constant bombarding disquiet.

Rung stopped, too early for her taste, just outside cern suite. Cern servo moved up, fingers tracing the line of biolights along cern gardbrace[1] unconsciously.

“Whirl?” cie asked, head tilting up so their optics met.

“Yeah, Doc?”

“May I bunt[2] you?” Whirl barely resisted laughing in cern face. The words implied _joke_ , but the tone, half lit optics implied _earnesty_.

“You can try,” she answered. Rung strained upwards in an attempt to compensate for their disparate heights, balancing on the tips of cern pedes, before grinding cern voxcoder pointedly. Whirl snorted, taking pity on cir and leaning down. Cie chirped and bowed slightly, pressing cern crest against her forehelm, optics offlining. One hand snuck up to the side of her helm, cupping the curved metal, fingers trailing towards the back of her helm, where they traced the rim of her audial disk, thumb brushing against her antennae, light enough to be a coincidence. _Holy scrap_. Cie bent back cern neck, angling cern helm so that cern lips met the rim of plating around her optic. Rung bumped cern lips against it, laying out a trail of contact from the tip of one pedipalp, down to it’s base, across the rim of her optical bell, to the base of the other pedipalp, and then to it’s own tip. Cern crest ground against her forehelm as cie moved. _Holy **fragging** scrap_. Cern servo wandered to the back of her neck and cie pulled their helms together, denta parting to gently bite the metal between her pedipalps. Cie sent a shock of static between them with such flourish that Whirl suspected cie was showing off on _purpose_.

They lingered like that, helms pressed flush, for a moment. Then Rung pulled back, fingers trailing across the cables of her neck, glossa parting out to lick oral lubricant from cern upper lip. It took Whirl a moment to realise the entirely undignified whirring she was hearing was coming from her fans.

“ _Primus_ you’re a good bunter.” Had she actually just _said_ that? Frack, she sounded like a pit forged _newform_. Embarrassing. Rung’s optics flashed, cie covered cern mouth with a hand and _giggled_ , and suddenly Whirl found herself unable to give a burning scrapheap what she sounded like.

“My, aren’t you a _flatterer_ ,” cie teased.

“Come on Eyebrows, give yourself some credit.” She let out a short hacking burst of laughter. “Bunting _this_ face? I’m 90% optic, Eyebrows. That’s gotta be, like, the Ultimate Challenge Mode of bunting.” Rung knitted cern eyebrows in confusion.

“Bunting is merely the act of meeting upper helms so that each partner’s optics points towards the others’ and that the maximum number of sensory ampullae[3] are stimulated,” cie said.

“I mean, _technically_ sure,” Whirl allowed, “but when you don’t have a faceplate or a mouth or... really _any_ soft plating-”

“My assumption was that the majority of your facial ampullae are located in your forehelm and pedipalps. Was this incorrect? Would you prefer we try something else?”

Whirl stopped herself _just_ short of saying that Rung could try anything cie damn well _pleased_ on her.

“No, no that was fine- that was _great_ ,” Whirl vented, found herself suddenly aware that her arm was still pressing Rung’s frame to her side. She considered pushing cir away and fleeing the scene, but the other mecha seemed perfectly comfortable, and in all honesty she _really_ didn’t want to let go.

“So,” Rung said, grinning with bashful mischief. “How about I treat you next time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Gardbraces are pieces of plating that protect the shoulders and/or the sides of the thorax.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return1%E2%80%9D) ]  
> 
> 
> 2 Bunting is the act of touching foreheads. Since not all Cybertronians have mouths, they don't attach the same significance to mouth-to-mouth contact that some human cultures do. Socially and interpersonally speaking, bunting is the Cybertronian equivalent of kissing. Bunting is common amongst both romantic and platonic partners, though romantic partners tend to incorporate more secondary actions (nuzzling, exchanging static shocks, intake contact, and fieldplay) into their bunts, while platonic partners tend to bunt longer.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return2%E2%80%9D) ]  
> 
> 
> 3 Ampullae are electromagnetic sensors or electroreceptors, located throughout the Cybertronian body but most densely on the face and hands.  [ [return to text](%E2%80%9C#return3%E2%80%9D) ]


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q: How do you make Primus laugh? A: Make plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/11158835

Whirl let out a sustained whine. It pierced the atmosphere of the small room, redoubled off of the walls in pitchy echoes. She held the tone for at least ten minutes, an impressively long duration considering what a strain on her voxcoder it constituted. It was all for naught, however, as Rung seemed entirely immune to the noise. She should get the des’ of the mecha who’d trained the antique to resist interrogation. Growing frustrated with cern tolerance, Whirl transmuted her displeasure into glyphs.

“Come on Doc,” she whined, “you’re bailing on our third date?”

“ _Bailing_ implies intentional, even deceptive, behavior,” Rung replied, not bothering to look up from where cie was shuffling through cern datapads. “I neither intended nor expected to be working late this cycle. When it became clear I _would_ be, I came here to tell you in person.” Whirl huffed petulantly, kicked her legs back and forth off the edge of her chair.

“You do know that’s when we get to go wild on each other’s arrays, right?” she asked, helm tilting and voice turning stern. “Third date is clanging time: that’s the rule.” Now _that_ got a smile out of Rung, even if it was thin.

“I must’ve skimmed that part of the Autobot code,” cie said.

“Skimming the code, Eyebrows?” Whirl cycled her optic wide to emphasize her supposed horror at the idea. “I’ll have to report you to Magnus!”

“Report away,” Rung shrugged, jogging cern datapads one last time as cie rose to cern pedes. “She’s the one who asked me to perform a time sensitive assessment at the last minute.”

“ _Time sensitive_?” Whirl clicked her claws, gleeful at the prospect of gossip. “Bet it's one of the mechen Drift and Ratch picked up then, eh? Pharma not the only Delphi-Doc who gets all malpractice-y when their delicate _feelings_ get hurt?” She’d been aiming for a laugh, but Rung’s mouth turned downward in a frown instead.

“You know I can’t tell you the details of my work,” cie chided. Whirl huffed loudly, rolled her optic.

“I’m just having some fun. Can you blame me? I got all this free time I’m gonna have to fill now.” Did that sound pathetic? That _definitely_ sounded pathetic. Scrap. But it did get Rung to pause, to turn back to the table with gentle optics.

“I’m sorry,” cie murmured. “I know this is sudden. I’ll make it up to you. Come over to my office as soon as I’m done for the cycle.” Cie reached out, slowly, resting cern hand on her rotor shield and pressing a field full of warmth and apology against her plating. “We’ll make plans for next week, alright?” Whirl stared at cern hand for a minute; Rung made no move to leave.

“...Next week, right Doc?” she finally asked. Prima, this mecha’s was going to make her _soft_.

Rung smiled that smile that Whirl swore could make even _Shockwave’s_ spark skip.

“Next week,” cie confirmed. “I’ll be all yours.”

***

Next week Rung’s helm was in a million pieces.

Next week everything had been shattered and Rung was lying on a medical slab and cie looked so _small_ , smaller than cie’d ever looked before. Cern helm was gone and cern thumb was missing and apparently the medics had needed to rip off cern very _kibble_ to treat cir, and it was all because of _her_. It was all because, when Fort Max had thrown a tantrum-- Whirl refused to dignify the incident with any word more respectful than‘tantrum’-- and decided to take his vendetta with Prowl out on Rung, Whirl hadn’t been enough. She had been there-- _right there_ \-- and she had _tried_ , she had fought and bargained and distracted. She had spilled her guts-- first literally, with that damn pipe stuck through her, and then then figuratively, when Rung wouldn’t speculate on her tragic backstory for Max’s amusement-- rather than see that damn fusion cannon pointed at Rung’s helm.

But it didn’t matter, it wasn’t enough, she wasn’t _enough_ : strong enough, smart enough, fast enough. Too rash, too crude, too fragging _pathetic_.

In the Medbay one of the Delphi newbies soldered a slapdash patch to keep her from losing any more energon. Once Fort Max had been similarly welded closed and brought to the brig, they suggested she leave. _Suggested_ meaning, on the part of the nurses, ineffectual prodding and shouting; and on the part of Magnus, dragging her out by the pedes like a mangy turbofox. Ratchet hadn’t wanted to let Whirl back into the Medbay after that, going so far as to send First Aid to her suite for her follow up.

Undeterred by Magnus’ grip, by Ratchet’s weaseling, by Rodimus’ eulogy, she camped out in front of the Medbay Entrance until she was running on fumes and fury, until Ambulon took mercy on her.

Someone had brought cir one of cern ships. Cie was holding it, and what disturbed Whirl the most was seeing cern fingers so _still_ around it. She’d never noticed, consciously at least, how much of Rung was movement. Fingers constantly fluttering and tapping and feeling. Hands flapping, frame rocking, legs jostling, antenna twitching. This frame, stripped of kibble and helmless and motionless, was almost unrecognizable.

Foreign as cern body was to Whirl, they still couldn’t make her leave cir.

Until the next cycle, that was, when Ultra Magnus came back to personally escort her to the last place she wanted to _be_ for the last thing she wanted to _do_. Once she’d been corralled into the office of the therapist she’d ended up assigned to-- some speedboat named Dr. Skimmer-- xe tried to make her talk about Fort Max. Xe asked why Whirl had been in Rung’s office. Xe asked why she wouldn’t leave the Medbay. Xe asked if Whirl had refueled that cycle. Whirl ignored xir outright, clawing long crooked gashes into the therapy slab in bitter silence as their time ran down. Magnus came around, once the hour was up, to make her go to her suite.

She tore Animus’ berth half to scrap and punched the walls until her talons crumpled.

***

The week after Whirl destroyed two slabs and officially earned herself a Duly Appointed Stalker, she managed to wheedle Ratchet into letting her visit the Medbay a second time. Rung’s helm had been put together, cern thumb replaced. It made cir look more like cernself, but a repaired frame meant only so much. Cie was no more responsive, no more mobile, than cie had been as an isolated module plugged into a spinal strut. Whirl wanted to grab cir by the arms and shake until cern struts came loose from their sockets. Whirl wanted to open up cern helm to prove to herself cern brain was really inside. Whirl wanted cern voice, the dim light of cern half shuttered optics, the calm of cern field. Whirl wanted cern smile back.

This time she was a good mecha, only had to be asked twice before she left.

She wasn’t in the mood for being strongarmed out of the Medbay, for coming up with barbs to spit at Magnus as she dragged her into the hall. She didn’t want Rung to hear. Which was silly-- she knew the activity in cern neural circuitry had barely increased since she last saw cir-- but she could not shake the feeling that beneath that blank face and those eerily still fingers cie was listening. What was it cie had said? ‘Remarkably durable, and so _resilient_.’ So what if Whirl had seen livelier corpses? Cie had a new helm, cie had audials again. _Nothing is impossible_. Maybe this was. Maybe _they_ were.

If there was anything for Whirl to be was grateful for, it was the fact that no one seemed to have figured it out yet: Rung and her. Everyone assumed Whirl was in Rung’s office to get her own glitched processor tinkered with. It made sense-- probably more sense than the reality did. They’d only gone out in public once. Everyone knew she was damaged goods. She didn’t see any reason to correct them. No one was giving her pitying glances in the hall, no one was offering sympathy, no one knew how _weak_ she had become. That was good. Better than the alternative, at least. Medbay visits aside, she was careful to maintain a certain distance: throwing herself into fighting and joking and gloating as if she was not burning inside, as if her circuitry felt clear and whole instead of sick and burnt and _broken_. As if violence was still the only thing she could find to cut through the anhedonia. Tearing apart nanocons and provoking Drift and not killing nearly as many Galactic Council Members as she wanted to. She did not mention Rung’s designation, not once, and no one mentioned it to her.

 _Almost_ no one.

Dr. Skimmer tried to ask about Rung. Whirl revved her engine and stared hard at the ceiling and spat out that Dr. Skinner was a dross-soaked scraplet-carcass of a therapist compared to Rung. Rung wouldn’t be so blunt. Well, Rung wouldn’t be so _insensitively_ blunt. Probably. Maybe. Rung would know how to shape cern patter around the problem and test her reactions and find the best way to ask. Rung would know how to figure out what Whirl was feeling when _she_ didn’t even know what she was feeling, when she couldn’t even find words for it, when every emotion tasted like fury or weakness. Dr. Skinner suggested Whirl read up on some of Rung’s writing, if she thought so highly of cir work.

Whirl suggested Dr. Skinner bunt a thresher.

***

It had been the three weeks since Whirl’d seen Rung’s helm shattered into pieces when Rewind invited her to tell a story. Whirl told him, in no short words, to go suck start a blaster. Rewind said it was for Rung. So Whirl went.

It didn’t work. She poured her spark out to the mecha and what did cie do? Sat there like a husk in a Relinquishment Clinic stockroom. [[kill cir just kill cir just like springer cie doesn’t want this]] Thank Primus for the alarm, that screeching cry that jarred her out of her memories and out of her pain. Thank Primus for Roddy running up and down the halls, reminding her that she could take that pain and make it physical. She could take that aching and make herself a gun, take that sparkache and make it a bullet. She could take the pain in her spark and pool it into her claws and her guns, she could take her problems and make it someone else’s wound. So Whirl did.

She was jittery all the way down to Temptoria; the shuttle was loud and the smell of burning energon haunted her helm. She arrived like a hurricane, like Solus’ forge, like she hadn’t spilled fuel since the Dead End. She killed every ‘con she could get her claws on, handed weapons of mass destruction out like party favors, and finally concluded that she was just going to have to take the ‘kill’ route for Cyclonus after all.

She hadn’t intended to take the ‘kill’ route for Rewind too. She had forgotten he was still in there. She could have opened the door-- except Rewind’s story had done scrap-all for Rung, except he’d made Whirl look weak in front of everyone, except he and Chromedome were disgusting lovebots, except she wanted Chromedome to lose something like Drift lost Crystal City, except she wanted him to see something he loved die _too_ , except she didn’t want the title of most broken mecha on the Lost Light anymore. She still could have opened the door-- except if she did Cyclonus would be on the other side, Cyclonus and her promises of long and protracted demise.

She carried Rewind back to the shuttle while Tailgate stayed to comm Chromedome. She hovered by the Medbay, and when First Aid called for a spark jump she cleaned up the mess she’d made. She hated the gratefulness in Chromedome’s voice. Chromedome said he owed her a favor. She thought about telling him to shove his needles right through her optic and _twist_ until she stopped twitching. She thought about telling him that the price of his Conjunx’s life was Rung’s. She thought about telling him to suck Rung right out of her brain. She thought about telling him that, congratulations, Rewind’s spark was polluted now.

After she left the Medbay she broke into Rung’s office and stole some datapads off of cern shelf.

***

A fourth week passed before anyone thought to tell Whirl that Rewind’s story _did_ work. Or at least, something _Skids_ had done had made it work. Ratchet chased her away from the Medbay without letting her so much as sneak a glance at cir. Which was ridiculous, considering she could hear Swerve chattering inside, and sie was the one who’d actually _shot_ cir. Admittedly, Whirl could _sort of_ see how shoving the doors open so hard they’d crumpled and jammed into the doorway while screaming ‘you slag sucking afthelm spawns of Unicron have a _deathwish_ or something?’ might not have been the _most_ delicate approach.

There weren’t any ‘cons around to kill, so she tore down the hall to one of the exercise rooms and dispatched three of the training drones in particularly messy ways.

Dr. Skimmer brought that up at their next appointment. Apparently she’d made enough noise, or at least enough _mess_ , to merit an official demerit from Magnus. Whirl wasn’t pleased with that, but she wasn’t surprised either. Leave it to Mags to write her up for good behavior. Dr. Skimmer asked why tearing three drones into piles of scrap merited ‘good behavior’ in Whirl’s perspective. She spat back that if she hadn’t killed _something_ she would have torn _Swerve_ to scrap, would’ve done so already except that-- in the haze of getting patched up after Max’s tantrum-- she’d heard Ratchet say that Rung’s spark was getting stronger, that cern brain module was still active. Rung wouldn’t like it if she offlined Swerve, or Fort Max, or herself. If Rung was going to wake up, she had decided, she wanted to be there. Not in the brig. Someone would have to be there for cir to talk to. Someone would have to help cir relearn how to move in a damaged body. Someone would have to tell cir about Red.

Whirl had wanted to be that someone.

She walked from Dr. Skimmer’s office back to her hab suite and found that her door had finally gotten fixed. She crashed on the mess of sharp edges and warped planes she had made out of Animus’ berth. By the time she’d finished her defragging protocols lights out was in effect. She rolled over in her nest of writhing scrapmetal, took Rung’s datapads out of her subspace. There was something by Froid about personality types, which she tried to puzzle through for about three minutes before tossing aside. One tablet contained several pamphlets about whatever “neurodiversity” was supposed to be, another was a poem with no listed author. Whirl settled on reading an essay about graffiti in the Dead End, because it had pictures.

She pretended to herself that this was because datapads with pictures were easier to read, not because these pictures in particular were nostalgically, achingly familiar. They were not the most skillfully taken, sometimes blurry and often awkwardly framed, but they were so _real_. They called up cold nights and stale lowgrade-- the aching, unmendable parts of her. A flick back to the introduction revealed that, though the essay was someone else’s writing, the images were all Rung’s work. It was ridiculous and endearing to imagine the little ‘bot rushing around the Dead End, snapping imagecaptures of vandalised signs.

She grew bored of reading quickly, but uploaded the tablet’s contents to her memory banks anyway, extracting the images and playing them in a slideshow as she idled in her nest. Whirl knew those places, knew that a rover like Rung must have had to climb onto ledges and balance on fences and inch perilously close to traffic to get the angles cie did. She felt her optic curve into a smile.

Little guy was tougher than she’d thought.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl receives good news

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/11216065

On the five week anniversary of the third date she should have had with Rung, Whirl came out of recharge to a message from Ratchet waiting in her inbox. She debated deleting it-- as if moving a message into her trash folder could invalidate the information it contained. Whatever it was, she didn’t expect it to be good. She didn’t want to hear that she was up for another followup with First Aid. She didn’t want to hear Rung was fading. She didn’t want to hear the little mecha’s first words out of cern coma were a request for a restraining order on her.

She opened it, because millions of years of war and her own frenetic processor had cemented for her the fact that the unknown was always, _always_ worse than the known. It took several minutes for Whirl to parse the meaning within the CMOs begrudging and curt glyphs, and even longer for her to be certain she was reading it right.

<< Whirl: You’ve been requested. Visiting hours only. Tell Skimmer: Stop riding my aft. Ratchet.>>

She felt her spark do that ridiculous pathetic _flipping_ thing and didn’t even feel like purging from it. She briefly, magnanimously, considered the possibility of loathing Dr. Skimmer _slightly_ less, but that was a decision to be made in a less heady mood.

When she arrived Rung was propped up on the medical slab, tracing small pictures on a datapad. Whirl recognised the exercise-- the Senate, in its supreme irony, had put her through a half hearted rehabilitation program after they mutilated her-- well enough to tell that Rung was not doing particularly well with it. Her optic focused, rapt, on cern clumsy servos. Whirl thought about Rung showing her cern Ark 1, about the rows of ships she’d seen in cern office, about what cie’d said about assembling delicate things and the universe at large. Whirl wanted to punch the ever loving scrap out of the universe at large. When Rung finished the assessment, dropping the stylus like an unimaginable burden, Ambulon took the tablet and transferred the date into cern file. Rung’s optics continued to point towards cern lap, cern fingers twitched with none of their usual grace.

“Rung,” Ambulon touched cern arm, then pointed to her. “Whirl is here.” Rung’s helm shot up, but instead of focusing immediately on Whirl cie turned cern gaze back and forth, searching in confusion. “Whirl,” the nurse called as Rung continued to scan the room, “come over so I can show you to Rung.”

“Is there something wrong with your optics?” Whirl asked, cautiously approaching the slab. She watched, plating flared, as Ambulon grabbed Rung’s wrist, prompting the injured mecha to tense.

“Something with cern image processing, we think,” Ambulon answered as Rung relaxed into the grip, letting the nurse pull cern arm forward. “Cie can process objects that are stationary or move in predictable set paths, but drones and mechen are still throwing cir.” When Ambulon released cern wrist and backed away Rung kept cern arm out, reaching towards Whirl. “Cie’s better at recognising people by field and touch, so long as mechen approach cir one at a time.”

Whirl hesitated briefly before bowing her helm, pressing the side of her optical bell to Rung’s outstretched hand. Rung furrowed cern optical ridges, feeling and tapping clumsily at Whirl’s helm. There was a moment of agony wherein Whirl thought cie might not recognise, may never again recognise, a mecha without a face. But then Rung ran cern fingers over the surface of her optic, and when she curved it into a smile cir own optics flashed bright.

“W- hh- whirl,” cie stuttered, face tight with concentration. If Whirl’s spark had flipped inside its chamber before, it was doing a veritable high flying acrobatics act then.

“Hey Rung,” Primus was that her _voice_? “Long time no see.” Rung’s face split into a lopsided grin, the stroke of cern servos on her helm turned less inquisitive and more soothing. “I have some of your datapads, if you want something to read.”

Rung hummed in what Whirl was pretty sure was interest, so she rifled through her subspace for some of the loose tablets she had less-than-licitly acquired from cern office. She pushed the pads against the servo still resting in Rung’s lap. Rung glanced down, keeping the hand on Whirl’s helm steady, and traced the borders of the tablets with cir free servo, field flaring with something murkily similar to embarrassment.

“Can I read one to you?” Whirl blurted, claws clicking nervously. All this time she’d been overclocked to visit the mecha and now she was like a newbuild trying to go in for their first bunt. After a moment of what looked to be deep concentration Rung nodded, tapping one essay in particular. When Whirl took the datapad and moved back Rung’s mouth went thin with panic and cie lurched forward, fingers tightening against her audial disk in a clumsy attempt to keep contact.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Whirl said. She didn’t really know what you said to scared mecha to make them less scared, what you said to ease rather than inflict panic. “I’m here.” She pulled the seat next to the slab closer, leaning in so she could read the essay while staying in arm’s reach. “Is that good?” Rung’s optics fixed on Whirl’s, cie cracked a wide smile and jerked cern helm in a nod.

“Goo- G- Good.”

***

Reading to Rung quickly became a ritual.

It gave Whirl something to do, a task and a target to focus on when she visited the Medbay, and Ratchet thought it would help with Rung’s rehabilitation. Whirl would have prefered conversation. She wanted to ask and answer questions, to share stories, to hear Rung’s soothing voice rambling for hours-- but she knew that would be too much too soon. She had seen enough module damage in her time to know that she and Rung wouldn’t be able to simply pick up where they left off. Rung struggled with speaking, lost the flow of conversation easily, responded to cern designation only sporadically. So Whirl read to cir instead.

Whirl got her material out of the datapads she’d stolen from cern office. She’d swiped quite a few, and Rung recognised them well enough to point out the ones cie wanted to hear. Cie didn’t select many of the drier clinical articles, preferring case studies and opinion essays to stark statistics. Cie sometimes requested Whirl read a particular passage repeatedly, she wasn’t sure if it was out of confusion or just for the pleasure of it, perhaps a mix of both. She tried to read smoothly and crisply, like the actors in audio-tablets, but her voxcoder often stumbled over the elaborate and precise glyphs. She ended up fudging most of the pronunciation and skipping some words entirely-- Rung, fortunately, didn’t seem to mind. So she came back the next day, and the day after that, bringing her hoard of illicit datapads to every visit.

Rung’s language processing abilities were one of the first skills cie recovered. First came an improvement in comprehension, with Rung following requests and responding to questions with increasing competence. Then generation started to progress, with Rung’s vocabulary slowly expanding, cern stutter becoming less severe and cern nonverbal periods shorter. Ratchet said that this was to be expected-- Rung’s profession required cir to be proficient in both listening and speaking. Rung expressed the opinion that cern progress was thanks to Whirl’s reading, and deliberate ignored Ratchet’s grumbling to the contrary. As time passed Whirl’s reading periods became shorter, their conversations longer.

Visual processing began to rebound next, albeit at a slower rate. Cern memory seemed to have been mostly unaffected, along with the majority of cern sensory array. It was cern motor skills that had gotten the worst of it. Cern recovery in that domain was slow and laborious, which Rung blamed on cern age and on Cybertronian anatomy. The neural circuits that controlled movement had farther to travel, and were dispersed more sparsely, than those for vision or language, cie explained. Most of the damage done by Swerve’s stray rivet had been inflicted not to cern brain module, but to the circuitry that connected said module to cern frame. Cie noted, as well, that cern recovery would be considered remarkably swift, even _miraculous_ , by organic standards.

Ratchet pointed out that Rung _wasn’t_ an organic, then proceeded to assign cir twice as many hours of physical therapy per week.

***

When Rung’s gross motor skills had improved enough that Ratchet saw fit to turn cir loose, Whirl took cir out for fuel to celebrate.

Rung’s servo was unsteady as cie lifted cern cube. When cie pressed the rim to cern mouth to drink the fit was awkward, cie kept spilling small rivulets of fuel down cern chin and the underside of cern neck. Whirl made an earnest effort to refrain from find the streaks of glowing pink on the delicate cables of cern thin throat erotic, ended up getting cir a straw for the both of their sakes. The straw presented a smaller target, of course, but once cie’d gotten it between cern denta it was much easier to intake through.

The two mechen had arrived at Swerve’s-- between refueling periods, to avoid the worst of the crowds-- and ended up sitting at the same booth they’d shared on their second date. Rung was sticking to med grade, luckily Swerve had a small supply of it under the counter. The bar was still, more or less, the most comfortable place to refuel socially onboard the Lost Light. Whirl had considered asking Rung back to the recreation area by cern office, but worried that suggesting such an isolated place would make the little mecha jumpy. She’d also thought about offering her hab suite as a meeting space, but quickly dismissed that possibility based on the mess and the fact that it would probably give Rung the wrong impression.

Dr. Skimmer’s engine would probably stall if xe could see Whirl being so courteous.

“Well,” Whirl said, once Rung had gotten into a steady rhythm of refuel, because they hadn’t spoken more than two words to each other since sitting down and the other wheel had to drop sooner or later. “This is awkward.”

Rung’s optic ridges lifted, cie rolled cern straw to the corner of cern mouth with a flex of cern glossa that Whirl’s optic was far too interested in tracking for her own good. “I could mu- make it more awkward,” cie said, just a hint of mischief in cern field.

“You think so, Eyebrows?” Whirl sang, countering cern mischief with her own.

“Y- you never threatened to shoot a mech- ech- echa I love?” cie recited, grinning. Whirl’s antenna pinned back against her helm, her optic widened and then narrowed.

“Oh.” _Frag_. “You remember that.” Whirl’s optic immediately flickered down to her claws, she interlaced her talons and scythed them against each other in embarrassment. [[cut cir open and take the glyphs out get cir before cie gets you]] The things her glitched-to-the-pit processor decided to yell in the middle of a fragging hostage situation.

“Whirl-” cie began, field colored with concern. [[don’t let cir finish]]

“I’d sort of hoped,” she blurted-- louder than she wanted to but it was too late to stop. “I’d sort of hoped that the whole getting-your-helm-exploded business might have taken care of that bit of data before it made its way to long term storage.” She clicked her voxcoder nervously, realising how that had just sounded. “I mean, it’s not like I was rooting for _irreversible module damage_ or anything. But, hey, if you’ve gotta lose _someth-_ ” A small orange servo reached across the table, unflinchingly close to her jittery talons, and rested on her rotor casing. Her voxcoder faltered.

“Whirl, it’s alright. It was an abnormal and ex- extremely stressful situation. I harbor no discomfort or misgivings about what you said. I’m… I’m not ready to declare my recipro- pro- procation just yet, but...” Cie gave Whirl’s plating a comforting squeeze and smiled at her gently. ”I’m here.”

Rung withdrew cern hand and resumed refueling. Whirl was quiet for a few minutes before grinding and restarting her voxcoder self consciously.

“So,” Whirl said, finally, into her drink. “Tell me more about that... physical therapy dross.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rehabilitation takes time, takes patience. Whirl and Rung are in it for the long haul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon Pronouns Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4785962/chapters/11436961

Rung reached into the box of pegs, fumbling for a while before managing to isolate a target and pinch it tightly between the tips of cern fingers. Cie lifted the peg out, cern other hand gripping the edge of the table to steady cernself, and moved it over the board. Cern field hummed with concentration as cie attempted to insert it into one of the holes. 

Cie missed.

Rather badly, too: the base of the peg smacking against the surface of the pegboard nowhere near it’s designated hole. Rung whistle-clicked frustration, lifted the peg and attempted once more to stab it into the board. Another miss. This one, at least, was a little closer. Cie stuck cern glossa between cern teeth and bit, faceplates furrowed with concentration. A third try finally found the pesky thing sliding cleanly into it’s proper place. Rung’s mouth curved upwards for a moment, but frustration colored cern fields as cie glanced back to the peg box, which had at least a dozen more left for cir to sort.

“Hey!” Rung jumped at the sudden screech of Whirl’s voice. She ducked her helm by way of apology before continuing. “Lemme show you a little trick.” She pinched the sides of a peg between the tips of her talons, lifted it and rested the base on the surface of the pegboard. “If you do it like this...” She slid the peg forward, letting it drop into the first hole it met. “It’s way easier.”

“Thats n- not the point of the task,” Rung ex-vented, reaching to retrieve another peg. 

“It ain’t against any rules,” Whirl pointed out, trying not to let her antennae twitch as Rung failed cern next attempt.

“This isn’t meant to be a g- game, it is an exercise for rehabilitating my fine motor skills. I’m supp- p- po- posed to be doing it the hard way.” Another miss. “You’ll remember that, while the majority of my frame endured only minor damage, my neural circuitry, particularly brain to frame- ame connections-” A third miss, this time cie seemed to be getting further away. Cie raised the peg to optic level. “Cybertronian systems are incredibly resilient, but they don’t fix themselves.” 

Cie rolled the peg gently between cern fingers, the motion stiff and careful, and gazed at it with bright optics. For a few minutes cie simply stared, transfixed by the peg, field murky and subdued. Then cie exvented, straightening cern spinal strut and lining up for another attempt. 

For a while Rung’s office was silent but for the sound of metal tapping and scraping, the clatter of pegs being fished from their box Rung’s small unconscious noises of frustration and victory. Whirl relaxed as she watched, using the program Ambulon had given her for assessing cern progress to record notes about cern speed and accuracy. Her’s wasn’t a difficult task, just tedious, and it gave her an excuse to hang around Rung that _wasn’t_ incredibly pathetic.

“You don’t need to do this, Whirl,” Rung murmured, so quietly that she missed cern words until she played them back. 

“Come on Eyebrows,” she scoffed, running a parallel process to track the motions of cern hands as she turned her primary focus to cern face. “I know how annoying this dross is. What kind of mecha would I be if I didn’t share my cheat codes with a fellow invalid, eh?” She curved her optic into what she hoped approximated a reassuring smile. Rung’s grimace indicated she had failed.

“I didn’t mean the advice,” cie said, putting the peg on cern hand back into the box and clasping cern hands together. “I mean... s- staying with me, helping me with the exercises, recording my progress.”

If the little mecha was planning to trick her into revealing her softer reasons for wanting cern company, cie had another think coming. “You can’t do it yourself.”

“But _others_ could.”

Whirl snorted. “If I don’t, who will?”

“Ratchet,” Rung answered. “First Aid. Ambulon.”

“Yeah, but you don’t like medics.”

“I...” Rung faltered, cern optics flashed ever so slightly. Whirl had either said something very right or very wrong. _Great_. “I hold the medics on this ship in great esteem,” cie said, finally. “I harbor no ill will toward -ard -ards any of them. I am _myself_ a medic, if you’ll recall.” Whirl might have let that go-- newfound _courtesy_ and all that-- but that wasn’t even a _good_ bluff. She was really going to have to teach cir how to lie sometime.

“You don’t like them,” she stated. “Or the medbay.”

Rung ducked cern helm. The silence stretched for so long Whirl considered checking if cie had fallen into recharge, but as she was raising a claw cern helm dated back up. “Did I... tell you that?”

“Nah.” Whirl shook her helm. “I figured it out myself. First I thought it was the module damage, but then I realised it was only happening at certain places and around certain mechen. Every time you come in to get scanned again you’re looking at the entrance, you’re coming up with all these reasons you gotta be standing or sitting instead of lying down on the slab, and you won’t shut up. In a bad way. Not like when you won’t shut up because you’re excited about something, that’s different. And you do _that_ thing.” Rung gave her a questioning look. Whirl gestured to where cern hand was currently picking at the paint around cern biolights. Cie dropped cern servo back to cern lap as if shocked, letting out an embarrassed trill. Whirl couldn’t help but feel a bit smug at having taken cir by surprise. “Mechen think I don’t notice stuff, but I do,” she finished, flaring her plating slightly in satisfaction. 

“You are _very_ perceptive,” Rung agreed, which did nothing to deter her ego. For a moment cie simply gazed at the other mecha, smiling fondly, before clicking and returning to her task. The conversation lapsed for the next half hour, the scrape of peg to peg and peg to board making up a haphazard soundtrack until the box of was nearly empty and Rung’s voice once more rose above the quiet.

“...Whirl,” cie said, voice wavering-- Whirl couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or lingering damage. “The reason that medics-”

“Woah Doc,” Whirl laughed suddenly, raising her claws in supplication. “I’m not gonna make you explain why.” She shrugged, arching her stabilizers to emphasize the motion. “Pits, I don’t like them either. I’d propose a you-tell-me-yours I’ll tell-you-mine type of deal, but uh.” She twisted her claws to catch the light, clacking the tips together. “It’s probably pretty obvious why _I_ hate carvers. I don’t need to know why it gives _you_ the jolts.” 

Rung frowned, optical ridges furrowing, and chewed on cern lip before continuing.

“I’m sure that you speak veraciously, but I feel that I have an unfair or at least ill-gotten intimacy with your history. The insight I’ve gleaned into your cognition was the product of coercion, not intentional mutual unveiling.”

“Could you use more jargon, Doc?” Whirl chuckled, drawing her claws back to her body. “I almost understood that.”

Rung cringed “Sorry, I do that-”

“When you’re nervous, yeah,” Whirl cut cir off in a clumsy stab at being helpful. Rung seemed to take no offense to it, at least. “Just use actual glyphs.” 

Rung was silent for a while, concentrating, cern lips occasionally mouthing the shapes of sounds without vocalising. Finally cie straightened cern spinal strut and raised cern helm. “I know a lot of stuff about you,” cie said. “I know the stuff because Fortress Maximus threatened you, not because you decided to tell me. I feel bad.”

Whirl didn’t even need to force a laugh at that. “ _Seriously_ , eyebrows? All that? That was dross. Not even the worst I’ve been through. Definitely not the worst I’ve _done_.” 

“I believe you.” Rung exvented, clasping cern servos together and fixing intent optics on Whirl’s. “But I also believe what you shared was very significant. I want to share something significant with you, in exchange. If you are amena- if you want.”

Whirl’s first impulse was to tell Rung there was nothing cie could say that would fluster a veteran aftkicker like her. Instead she offlined her voxcoder and seriously considered cern offer. Loathe as she was to admit it, cie was right. Whirl wouldn’t have brought up any of that scrap, hadn’t _wanted_ to bring up any of that scrap, but for Max. Knowing that Rung _knew_ about her, about the watchmaking and the Dead End and the Senate? That hurt. Knowing that cie knew about her and _still_ asked for her in the Medbay, that cie hadn’t pried Whirl apart even further, that cern gaze had not been poisoned with pity? That... didn’t hurt. Whirl wasn’t completely sure what it did, but she liked it. She liked it, and if Rung had something cie thought measured up to that, if Rung had something secret and pitiable about cernself, she’d like to do it for Rung in turn.

“Okay, hit me Doc.”

“I…” cern voxcoder offlined with a click and cie shook her helm, sending a pulse of apology through cern field. “Forgive me, it may take me a moment to… to plan out the route of my explanation.” [[tell cir to shut the frag up then]]

“I’ve got nowhere to go,” she affirmed, shifting her pedes to plant them more firmly against the floor and trying her best to mimic Rung’s ‘listening pose.’ 

After a few minutes of fidgeting and humming Rung invented, exvented, then reached up and fiddled with something on cern shoulder. The kibble on cern back, cern wheels and plating, sloughed away completely, the mass clattering onto the floor. Whirl jumped to her feet, weapons whirring online and field sharp with horror. Cern kibble, cern plating, a part of cern _frame_ just came off like a human shedding their armor.

“Primus-” she sputtered, tearing her optic off of the mass of metal on the floor with some difficulty, focusing instead on Rung’s face. Cie didn’t look horrified, or agonised, or anything someone _should_ be when one of their most vital extremities just falls off. [[take cir apart you could take cir to pieces]] “Are- are you-”

“That isn’t my body.” Rung’s voice sounded stiff, cern smile was sad and apologetic, as cie interrupted her. “That isn’t my kibble. It’s…” Cie looked down at it, lips tight. “It’s an albatross.”

Whirl wanted to scream that that didn’t explain _anything_ , but she saw the angle of sadness in cern posture and bit down on the impulse. She couldn’t smell or see any energon, and Rung’s field was free of pain. Whatever had just happened, strange as it was and violent as it seemed, was not a threat. She forced her guns offline, sat back down despite her protesting actuators and rushing processor. 

“Okay,” she said, processing what the other mech had just explained. “So, you’re like... trans alt?” Whirl hadn’t met- well, Whirl hadn’t _known_ anyone she knew was trans alt, but she didn’t have any ill will towards mechen who were. She was struggling to find something to say that would be supportive instead of demeaning when Rung shook cern head decisively.

“No, I transform the same way as w- when I was first forged.” Cie leaned back, rolling cern shoulders a bit and humming between glyphs. “I have an alt which is… unique. It’s purpose is unknown.” [[ask cir to transform]] Primus below she was _not_ doing that. That would be… be rude and insensitive and cruel. That hadn’t stopped her processor before, but it _would_ stop her mouth _now_. Whirl rejected the suggestion with extreme prejudice and nodded for Rung to continue. 

“The Functionists Council did not like to see a mecha without a pur- urpose. They attempted to find a use for my alt. They were not kind about it, and that process was... painful. It went on for-- all together-- millions of years. It left lasting sc- scars on my frame and my processor. M- m- many of the perpetrators were medics, and nearly all of the traumatic incidents occurred in medical settings.” Cie exvented shakingly, field tight to cern frame and optics averted from Whirl. Whirl felt her optic narrow as she thought about Rung’s noncombatant frame, cir frantic jittering legs swung over the medical slab, cern poorly framed pictures of graffiti. _Tougher than she’d thought_. “You were entirely right. Esteem cannot overpower con- conditioned response. Logic is often unable to erase anxiety. Despite knowing that time has long passed, my frame still believes similar mechen and lo- lo- locations are unsafe. My processor insists that, if I am in the medbay, invasive examinations and other forms of medical abuse w- will ensue. It mobilises in an effort to protect me, even if the net result is negative.” 

Whirl thought about offering comfort-- as if she could do that, as if comfort was possible with her claws and her spark. Rung had gone quiet and still, but she couldn’t find glyph, but she had to say _something_ , but- 

“The _Council_ did that dross to you?” She blurted out incredulously, and Rung cringed and you’d _think_ once in a while through sheer _chance_ Whirl would say something _other_ than _the worst possible thing_ but here they were. [[cut out your voxcoder there’s something wrong with it]] “I’m not saying I don’t believe you!” she rushed to add, deliberately sending a pulse of sincerity through her field. “I just-” A functionary had let her leave the corps, had let her have her shop. [[something wrong with it and it’s spreading hurry]] “...I always thought they were a bunch of data compilers,” she muttered, the explanation sounding weak even to her own audials. “Bureaucrats, you know?” She hadn’t known they were capable of...

Rung smiled, optics sad, and nodded.

“The Council was far more powerful and ruthless than they let on. They had enormous sway with the Senate.” Cie reached for the final peg in the box, holding it over the board and narrowing cern optics. “And I don’t believe it is necessary to tell you of the _Senate’s_ sins.” When cie brought it down into the final aperture cern aim was shaky, but nearly there. A little wiggling got it secured. Whirl stared at the peg, optic dim.

“And now to take them _out_ ,” Rung exvented. Cie rolled cern shoulders and stretched cern spinal column. Suddenly cern field flashed, sharp and hot with something Whirl could not decipher, and cern plating flared. “Pardon m- m- me,” cie stood slowly, testing cern balance with one hand to the table, before kneeling down and fussing with the fake kibble cie had shed. Upon consideration, Whirl was pretty sure the flash coloring cern field was something… not good, and she followed cern actions carefully with her optic, helm tilted.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Rung raised cern helm, blinked behind cern scopes. 

“I’m... putting my pack back on?”

“Why? Didn’t you say it was ‘all big dross’?” 

Rung looked confused briefly, then laughed. “An _albatross_ ,” cie clarified. “It’s an old term for a burden, a mark of shame... I might have been being a bit _dramatic_.” Cie smiled, antenna painted downward, all denta and no sincerity. 

“Yeah, sounds like _all big dross_ to me,” she huffed, narrowing her optic at the discarded kibble in disapproval as if it had been the one to cut cir open. Rung exvented, but Whirl caught a flash of fondness in cern field, briefly overcoming the mystery aura. Cie stood, gripping the arm of cern chair for support, and averted cern optics to the floor.

“You don’t need to humor me,” cie said, so softly she almost missed it. Whirl wondered if a more conscientious mecha than she would drop the subject. Probably, but she was not _that_ much better, not yet at least.

“What are you on about, Doc?” she asked.

“Me. _This_.” Rung made a sharp stiff gesture to indicate the entirety of cern frame. “I told you about my defect willingly and with full awareness of the probable outcome. I know that my alt makes me undesirable on both… cognitive and physiological levels.” Cie waved cern hand, wrist limp. “You mustn’t feel obligated to- not having kibble, it’s like-”

“It’s like not having a _face_?” Whirl interrupted. Rung tensed, opening cer mouth, but only static clicking emerged. “It’s like not having _hands_?” Rung shut cern mouth and stared, optics bright, at Whirl. _Don’t have a smart response to_ that _,_ do you _, Doc?,_ she thought with no small measure of smugness. “Listen, Eyebrows, the _altmode_ thing?” she continued, her voice far more confident than her field, before Rung could reset cern voxcoder. “That doesn’t change this. Just like the _chronosmithing_ thing didn’t change… _this_. Right?”

“...this?” cie asked, voice and field cautiously still.

“You know. _This_.” Whirl waved her claw about to indicate _her_ and _Rung_ and all the slag between them. There was so much slag between them. “The thing where we’re dating and bunting and I’m absolutely fritzed for you.” Prima she was just making herself sound more pathetic with every glyph.

“Our relationship,” Rung clarified, but cern field warbled and warped with doubt.

“You want me to prove it? Tell me what I gotta do to prove that I’m still fritzed to a Primusforsaken _Pits_ for you. Paint my aft purple? Pick a fight with Drift? Bring you Megatron’s head on a platter? Find Luna-1 and carve your fragging des’ on it’s surface?” Whirl realised suddenly that she had risen back to her pedes, was looming over the board and casting shadows on the other mecha. She abruptly sat back down, huffed and jittered her claws. 

“We bunted. On the second date. _Before_ ,” cie said, quiet and choppy. Whirl nodded in acknowledgement and Rung offlined cern optics. “Can we do it again? You don’t have to, I just- If I can feel your field, and if I can touch you, if it’s real...” Well, that’d at least be way easier than stumbling into Luna-1. Whirl leaned forward, over the table, and gently tapped her forehelm to Rung’s crest. It wasn’t passionate-- like it had been so many cycles ago-- but it was steady, the pressure of plating against plating, it was secure. Cie stayed still and tense for a moment, field still tight, and then all of the sudden began to quiver, plating rattling.

“I’m sorry,” cie said, voice cluttered with static and artefacts. “I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional. It’s just- it’s been such a long time since-”

“If you don’t wanna, you don’t gotta,” Whirl cut cir off, trying to make the electromagnetic aura around her soft and warm, trying to say things with her field that her vocaliser was too crude to convey. For a while Rung was silent.

“I do,” cie finally said, voice brittle and glyphs strong. “I want this. I really, really do.”

“Cool. So, how about that third date?”

Rung laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are disappointed that this is not the most satisfying wrap up, please take heart in the fact that I have several more works planned for this series. If you are at all interested in future Rung/Whirl adventures, they will all be posted within the A "Good New Beginning//A Far Off Destination" collection. You can expect more snark and xenoculture as well as, uh, a lot of smut in the fics to come.
> 
> Apologies that this chapter took so long to post, by the way. I'd been updating regularly for the first six chapters because they were all pre-written. From now on I'm going to be posting as I finish, so updates to the series will be more sporadic and take longer.


End file.
